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Simplepowa
In Pursuit of Knowledge


Registered: 03/06/09
Posts: 4,310
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Gun Toting Cops Raid Legal Pot Patient For Two Plants
#13417337 - 11/01/10 09:15 AM (13 years, 6 months ago) |
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Machine-Gun Toting Cops Raid Legal Pot Patient For Two Plants By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ in Growing, News Wednesday, Oct. 27 2010 @ 9:39AM
Seattle Police officers knocked a legal patient's door down, charged in brandishing machine guns, and forced him face down to the floor. He had two legal plants.
Seattle Police officers brandishing submachine guns broke down the door of a 50-year-old medical marijuana patient Monday night and pushed him face down to the floor. His offense? He was legally growing two tiny cannabis plants.
Will Laudanski, a military veteran who was an Airborne Ranger in Desert Shield, wasn't even breaking the law. As an authorized medical marijuana patient in the state of Washington, he's allowed to grow up to 15 plants and possess 24 ounces of cannabis.
But Seattle Police have shown they are willing to treat the smallest of pot cases -- even in cases where the marijuana is legal -- as if they were raiding the biggest crack house or meth lab in town.
Just before 9 p.m. Monday officers at SPD's East Precinct held a briefing about a complaint of marijuana at a four-unit apartment building in the Leschi neighborhood, reports Dominic Holden at The Stranger.
A week earlier, officers had applied for a search warrant from King County Superior Court, sent an officer with a drug dog to sniff at the door, "confirmed the scent of marijuana," and started planning their big SWAT style drug raid.
A gung-ho SWAT team of officers decked out in all their Rambo-esque raid equipment -- between six and nine officers -- ran up the stairs, some carrying MP5 submachine guns, and one guy with a battering ram. They pounded on Laudanski's door and said it was the police.
"I was tying my robe," said Laudanski, who had just stepped out of the bathroom. "I said 'I am opening the door,' but before I could get my hand to the door, they busted it open and then rushed me."
Laudanski told The Stranger his door now "has cracks running right down the middle. I can't really bolt it."
"During the entry to this apartment, the locking mechanism to the front door was possibly damaged," the official incident report drily notes.
"I was trying to comply," Laudanski said. "Then they pushed me down to the ground and just basically got me positioned in a corner of the kitchen with my face on the floor."
As officers began to tear up the place while he was face down on the floor, Laudanski told them he was an authorized medical marijuana patient and directed them to his paperwork in the other room. "Do you want to see it?" he asked the officers.
Laudanski "had paperwork in the room declaring his marijuana grow was for medical purposes," the police report acknowledged.
As officers ransacked the apartment, they discovered two small marijuana plants in the bedroom, each growing in pots.
"They were able to see the full extent of my pathetic grow," Laudanski said. "There were four little nuggets of bud the size of your pinkie on one and five on the other. They're about 12 inches high."
Police didn't take the plants.
"Clearly, in this case, there was no law violation that was discovered," admitted Seattle Police spokesman Sean Whitcomb.
But Whitcomb adds, "Our mission is to enforce the law. We do that by gathering information of any evidence of any criminal violation. And I'd go on to say that had the officers known that, they would have spent their time doing something else. However, unfortunately, we don't always have that luxury."
But officers do have the luxury of speaking the English language, don't they? Couldn't they have, like, knocked on the goddamned door and asked about the marijuana, especially given the fact that Washington is a medical marijuana state?
Well, it turns out that "knock-and-talks" aren't the protocol for "drug cases" -- even small pot cases, Whitcomb said.
Well, heaven forbid you should go against your fucked-up protocol just because medical marijuana is legal, officer! By all means, feel free to break down doors, rough up sick people, and trash their homes! No need to make sure they're breaking the law first; that would violate protocol!
Laudanski said he hasn't done anything to attract the cops' attention. And he doesn't know why so much force was necessary.
"I came from a perspective that was pro-police," said Laudanski, who worked in New York as a paramedic. "But I still think this was very, very wrong what they did. I feel that higher-up people who ordered this, they are wasting our time and our money and they are putting innocent people in danger."
Every day in the United States, we have 100 to 150 paramilitary style SWAT raids on American homes, mostly in the name of the War On Drugs, according to NORML. Shouldn't we at least get the sick and dying off the battlefield?
http://www.tokeofthetown.com/2010/10/machine-gun_toting_cops_raid_legal_pot_patient_for.php
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Carl Sagan - "Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people." --- Robert Pirsig - "When one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion." --- Brian Cox - "[One] problem with today’s world is that everyone believes they have the right to express their opinion AND have others listen to it. The correct statement of individual rights is that everyone has the right to an opinion, but crucially, that opinion can be roundly ignored and even made fun of, particularly if it is demonstrably nonsense."
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Hashishins
Mind Manifesting


Registered: 07/27/10
Posts: 363
Loc: Psychedelic State
Last seen: 4 years, 12 days
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Re: Gun Toting Cops Raid Legal Pot Patient For Two Plants [Re: Simplepowa]
#13417354 - 11/01/10 09:19 AM (13 years, 6 months ago) |
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cause potheads are only ones you have to worry about in this fucked up world.
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digitalemu
Digital Emu
Registered: 09/01/10
Posts: 302
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Re: Gun Toting Cops Raid Legal Pot Patient For Two Plants [Re: Hashishins]
#13417404 - 11/01/10 09:42 AM (13 years, 6 months ago) |
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Gotta get all those pot smokers. They cause too much danger to surrounding snack foods. The death of a Cheesy is nothing to be taken lightly. I wonder if large quantities of empty potato chip bags in the garbage is enough evidence to get a search warrant.
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Boheim
Pondering Thangs



Registered: 06/12/10
Posts: 770
Loc: edge of the future
Last seen: 11 years, 10 months
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Re: Gun Toting Cops Raid Legal Pot Patient For Two Plants [Re: Simplepowa]
#13417468 - 11/01/10 10:08 AM (13 years, 6 months ago) |
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just a huge waste of tax dollars to pay bored brutes that need a legal way to rough people up.
-------------------- Není důležité co v životě děláš, hlavně že to dělaš. You can read books about mycology and taxonomy all your life, until you actually go out and hunt mushrooms you are nothing but a bloody n00b. Same goes for mushroom cultivation or any other subject. Theoretical knowledge is nothing without practical application of that knowledge. -German Kahuna
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auronlives69
psychedelic monk



Registered: 04/19/09
Posts: 655
Last seen: 4 years, 10 months
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Re: Gun Toting Cops Raid Legal Pot Patient For Two Plants [Re: Simplepowa]
#13417845 - 11/01/10 12:05 PM (13 years, 6 months ago) |
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why isnt this on the evening news? because that kind of news is for the brainwashed masses
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The past is dead. It was all just a dream...
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SWEDEN
Miracle of Science

Registered: 10/25/04
Posts: 2,577
Loc: PNW
Last seen: 7 years, 7 days
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Re: Gun Toting Cops Raid Legal Pot Patient For Two Plants [Re: auronlives69]
#13418322 - 11/01/10 02:08 PM (13 years, 6 months ago) |
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Because they are busy covering events that actually MATTER! Accidental dog poisonings, zombie weddings, and women's basketball are all far more important than a story about jackboot thugs breaking down a veteran's door for some plants. /sarcasm
Whenever I happen to see the local evening news, which isn't often, I feel sick to my stomach. It's like this in every city; the hokey stories about events which don't impact most people in the slightest get the most air time. Whereas events like this one which impact everyones' personal freedoms are largely ignored.
On the rare occasion the news is actually covering a legitimate story, they add their own spin and goofy suggestions to throw us off. I'm still picking shards of glass and cathode ray tube out of my knuckles.
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digitalemu
Digital Emu
Registered: 09/01/10
Posts: 302
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Re: Gun Toting Cops Raid Legal Pot Patient For Two Plants [Re: SWEDEN]
#13418568 - 11/01/10 03:08 PM (13 years, 6 months ago) |
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The local news would rather concentrate on the latest sports event than things that actually matter.
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